Category Archives: Gun Rights

After Orlando, gun control has been in the news and I will be discussing that topic, both as a general issue and how it pertains to the Presidential election.

I will also be discussing Donald Trump, who his campaign needs to pick as a VP candidate, why he is in “yuge” trouble at the moment, and why the Democrats might do well by picking Elizabeth Warren as the VP pick.

I will also be doing an update on SourceFed and their lies about Google.

Those topics and more at 9pm Central on Liberal Dan Radio, Talk From The Left, That’s Right.

I will first discuss a horrible attack ad I saw today by Cynthia Hedge-Morrell and explain why she is no better than Senate Conservatives.

I review what happened at CPAC. Straw polls, random musing, speeches, hypocrisy and all the other “good stuff” that can only come from a convention of tea party supporters.

I will also bring up charter schools. With what is going on in New York there has been some additional chatter happening about if these charter schools best serve the community. Some schools may have success. But at what cost?

Finally, Bobby Jindal has yet again proven himself to be a hypocrite. I will explain why this is nothing new.

Those topics, headlines, tweet of the week, and more on Liberal Dan Radio: Talk From The Left, That’s Right.

Good old Vlad Putin is at it again, this time invading the Ukraine. Of course this means the Conservatives are at it again as well. The warmonger side of the party just wants to blow everything up it can. The tea party side finds fault with everything Obama does. And some people who are sandwiched in between the establishment GOP and the Tea Party are proving themselves to be major hypocrites (beyond the normal Conservative hypocrisy).

In news related to the Ukraine, people are now hailing Palin as a genius for supposedly predicting Putin going into Ukraine. They are also suggesting that Obama is handling the situation irresponsibly by “missing” security meetings. I will go into why that is a bunch of rubbish as well.

A student in New Jersey is suing her parents to cover tuition for High School and College and for other expenses pertaining to her being dependent on her parents for support. She does seem like a spoiled brat but I will discuss why many people are missing some very important facts here and how the parents are no angels either.

I will discuss what I am giving up for Lent and discuss if the lenten season is really a sacrifice to those of use who are not land locked.

Finally, I will go over some of the shootings I have discussed from Merritt Landry to Marissa Alexander.

That, headlines, tweet of the week, words of redneck wisdom and more tonight on Liberal Dan Radio: Talk From The Left, That’s Right.

The worst kept secret in Louisiana politics was revealed this week. Louisiana’s junior senator David Vitter has announced his candidacy for governor. Current governor Bobby Jindal is term limited and has to sit out a term before running again. Vitter is already pushing a “family values” campaign via his surrogates and that means the gloves come off when it comes to his involvement in the DC Madam scandal. Regardless of his “serious sins” I will go into why Vitter is bad for Louisiana. I will also explain why his own words make him inelligible to serve office according to his own standards.

Florida is at it again. Yet another shooting has taken place for no reason. Curtis Reeves, a former police captain, shot somebody over him sending text messages during the previews. And, of course, Reeves is claiming “self defense”. Now, nobody can say if that claim will be successful in court until the trial happens. However, if it does, this will be evidence that Florida law is absolutely ridiculous.

A Milwaukee couple was running a private, Christian, voucher school and that school abruptly closed down last month. What students did they serve? What happens to them now? And where are the owners? The answers to at least some might surprise you.

All that plus and update on the New Orleans noise ordinance, headlines, tweet of the week, words of redneck wisdom, and more this week on Liberal Dan Radio: Talk From The Left, That’s Right.

George Zimmerman was detained by Florida Police involving an altercation with his wife, father in law, and yes a gun. I wonder how he will avoid jail time this time.

Florida does have its share of lunatics. Another person is using both “Stand Your Ground” and the “Bush Doctrine” in defense of his shooting his neighbors. William T Woodward has shot three men, killing two, because he felt tormented by them. Seems legit…

And not to be outdone by the lunacy in Florida, Iowa is issuing gun perments to blind people. Seriously.

Finally, this is the 12th anniversary of 9/11. Will we learn the lessons of that day or will we continue to make the same mistakes that we made afterwards? And have the Conservatives gone off the reservation with their response to Obama’s use of force and how it successfully caused Putin to act with their ally Syria.

All that, headlines, tweet of the week, words of redneck wisdome and more on Liberal Dan Radio: Talk From The Left, That’s Right.

On national defense, President Obama is expected to discuss reducing nuclear weapons and bringing troops home from Afghanistan. I am sure the tea party response, if not the main GOP response, will be critical of the reduction of nuclear weapons (even though we have more than enough to take out everyone else on Earth).

There is also a suggestion that President Obama will announce a free trade agreement with Europe. I am ok with “free trade” as long as it is “fair trade”. The American worker cannot compete with workers in other countries where labor laws are not equivalent.

Of course, excerpts of the official GOP response is also available. (What an amazing time we live in where we can debate excerpts from two speeches before they even happen.) Rubio looks like he will rest his middle class argument on having a “free economy”. This usually means an economy with less governmental regulation. Of course, it is competition and not a free economy that is good for consumers. The “free economy” supported by Rubio and the GOP (as well as the tea party) allows for large corporations to consolidate power and provide barriers to entry, including economies of scale, that prevent upward mobility for individuals and make it harder for competition to do its job in keeping prices down.

Rubio blames President Obama and government for businesses not giving raises and reducing benefits. It is amazing how Conservatives think. It is not the greed of the business owners that are to blame for this in their eyes. Forget the fact that Wall Street is doing amazingly well. Forget the fact that the disparity between the wealthy and the poor is the highest it has ever been in years. No, to the GOP the reason that these business owners are not sharing in their personal successes is because of taxes and required benefits. I guarantee you that many of these businesses, if they didn’t have their higher tax rates and if they didn’t have to cover health insurance, that the additional revenue gained would not be going into the pockets of the employees. That money would just go into the pockets of the employers.

If the GOP gets its way, no additional employees will be hired, no additional wages would be paid, and no additional benefits will be earned. Most employers are not altruistic. Most employers will not just give away their profits. Unless labor can force them to pay more money, the employers will keep as much as possible. But it has been the main goal of the GOP recently to take power away from labor. And that is why the GOP plans are bad for the economy because they are bad for the worker. They take power away from employees and give it to the employer. And when the employer has that upper hand, the employee gets stuck having to take whatever he/she can get.

Rubio wants growth in the economy. But growth wont happen until we stop making it profitable for US jobs to be shipped overseas. Growth wont happen if we sign free trade agreements with other countries that lack the employee protections that we currently have.

The Tea Party response from Rand Paul is also available online. Unfortunately it is full of straw man arguments and is really not worthy of comment at this time. I will wait until the full speech is given to see if he gets into details or if he is just full of hot air.

One of thebiggestlies told by the Conservatives after Newtown is that shooters will focus their attempts at violence at gun free zones because they will meet no resistance. Their solution is to put armed guards at these schools to keep the potential shooters away.

So why did this happen? That’s right. A gunman entered a police precinct and started shooting.

So much for the theory that having guns at a location will prevent a shooter from attempting gun violence. The truth is that a potential killer will commit acts of violence regardless of the risk of someone else returning fire.

I am a frequent listener to the John Osterlind show on Rush Radio 99.5 FM in New Orleans. I will also call in and set the Conservatives straight when important. This is where I have earned the nickname “Liberal Dan”.

Today he was discussing certain “facts” pertaining to gun control. One set of facts was a listing of all countries in the 20th century that eliminated vast segments of its citizenry. Each of them had taken the guns away from their citizens. I am not disputing those facts. However, the conclusion Conservatives make about these facts are false. By pointing these “facts” out they try to make people believe that countries that enact strict gun control laws are trying to eliminate portions of their populations. But that is absolutely untrue. There are plenty of countries that have enacted stricter gun control laws that we have that are not trying to systematically eliminate portions of their populations.

Another set of facts was that for the most part, mass shootings take place in “gun free zones”. This is true, but again misleading. The point he and others try to make is that these killers search out these gun free zones to commit their acts of violence. However, this is not true. Shooters may choose to commit gun crimes in such areas. Bombers do not care about a lack of gun free zones. Timothy McVeigh wouldn’t have been able to bring a gun into the building in OKC. That didn’t matter to him, because he chose to use a bomb instead. Osterlind tried to say that the facts prove that if a potential killer knows someone with a gun might be there, that they will not go murder people. However, what it tells me is that people who want to murder other people will find a way to murder those people based on the situation at hand. If the killer is less likely to be successful using a gun and instead will be more likely to be successful by using a bomb, the killer will use a bomb.

The response by Osterlind? He suggested that bombs are harder to get so it is less likely that a killer would be able to get the job done with a bomb. Ironic, because that is exactly what an anti-gun advocate would say.

I am more than willing to discuss the issue of gun regulations with people on both sides of the aisle. However, when the pro-gun folks insist on using logical fallacies to promote their agenda, it is very difficult to have an honest discussion with them.

I have a lot of Conservative Facebook friends. I also post in several Facebook groups where Conservatives post a lot. Because of this I get a clear window into the desires of many Conservatives out there and what they believe is the direction we should take this country.

After the Newtown shootings I have been seeing a lot of posts by those who wish to turn our schools into the wild west by arming all teachers. There are some major issues with this. The first in my mind would be what happens if a teacher freezes up while trying to use a weapon and the weapon goes to the shooter, allowing the shooter to have another weapon and more ammunition.

One of the defenses of this “arm the teachers” movement is a list of several examples where an armed civilian is able to prevent more harm because they either used a gun or showing the gun deterred more violence. These stories are out there.

But if we are going to have an honest and balanced discussion about such stories as proof, we would have to know what happened in all the other times a gunman threatened a group of people and other people had their own guns available. How many times did individuals with guns who were not trained to deal with this sort of situation froze up and were unable to do anything? How many times did the person with a gun just become a victim first because they were incapable of bringing it to bear. How many times was the gunman able to take the gun away and have an additional weapon from that point on?

So yes, there may have been times where an individual was able to protect other innocent civilians from a gunman because they were also armed. However, without the other information there is absolutely no way for us to know if this is the exception or if it is the rule. Until those questions are answered, the proposition by those Conservatives cannot logically be used as a defense for the “arm the teachers” argument.